CICALICS: the China Innovation Circles and Academy - Learning, Innovation and Competence Systems

Background

The initiative of CICALICS is built upon the experience by academia in Europe and North America. The experience shows that innovation studies can be greatly strengthened when scholars form national and international networks and organise research and research training together. The topic of innovation studies has received increasing support from the political level, from policy makers and business managers. But it is not always easy to build innovation studies at the single university and sometimes the scale of the activity is too limited at the single university.

The formations of the network CCC in the US, of EUNETIC-ETIC-DIME in Europe and of DRUID in Denmark have played a crucial role in moving innovation studies into a stronger position in academic studies and, as well, giving better quality for policy advice. One purpose of these initiatives has been to establish meeting places but another major purpose has been research training. In research training a minimum scale of the activity is important to create high quality.

What is CICALICS?

The idea with CICALICS is the following:

1, Invite a limited number, about 25, of outstanding international innovation scholars to become CICALICS members. They form the outer circle.

2, Create an open national network of Chinese innovation scholars – and public administrators/policy makers. They form the inner circle.

3, The new centre for innovation research at School of Economics and Management (SEM), Tsinghua University, in the central node in both the inner and outer circle in alliance with the strong groups at other Chinese Universities.

4, The network organises two interconnected activities to take place every year in the period of late August to early September.

a, An annual CICALICS Workshop, joining the inner and outer circle around some selected topics within innovation research. The workshops should not be a big conference. For instance it could involve only 10-20 international, 40 Chinese scholars and 20 Chinese Ph.D. The Workshop is to be combined with some public lectures on management and policy issues.  

The 2005 CICALICS Workshop was held from 31st August to 2nd September 2005, in Tsinghua University. The 2006 CICALICS Workshop took place from 28th to 30th August 2006 in University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China. The 2007 CICALICS Workshop will be held from 25th to 26th August, in Tsinghua University.

b, An annual CICALICS Academy, giving research training for the best Ph.D. students from China and from abroad as well. Training provided in CICALICS Academy uses international as well as Chinese scholars as lecturers some of whom would be invited from among the participants in CICALICS Workshop.

The 2005 CICALICS Academy was carried out from 3rd to 11th, September 2005, in Tsinghua University, Beijing. The 2006 CICALICS Academy was organized from 19th to 27th August 2006, in Tsinghua University. The 2007 CICALICS Academy will be held from 21st to 30th August, in Tsinghua University.

5, Gradually CICALICS may extend its activities and become the host of research projects, promotion of text-books on innovation in Chinese and perhaps even a new journal for Chinese innovation studies. But first things first!